


Exodus of the Ordinary

by Sinter



Category: Ordinary Magic - Caitlen Rubino-Bradway
Genre: Fair Folk, Gen, Under the Hill, Worldbuilding, creative evacuation, fixing plotholes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 02:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10322960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinter/pseuds/Sinter
Summary: A human town evacuates Under Hill in the face of destruction.  Traces remain.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I read "Ordinary Magic," and the plotholes wouldn't leave me alone. Why call the freakish, magic-less weirdos "ordinary," after all? Yet, Cold Iron's enmity to magic stunk of the Fae, not to mention the fantastical setting and the world's other denizens. The two ideas collided and stuck. Hopefully, this will get it out of my head now.
> 
> Beta'd by my brother, at one in the morning.

When the conquering army advanced on the town, after their own army had been defeated and the survivors had retreated in disarray, the townspeople went Under Hill to Faery.

The Fair Folk and the townspeople had lived alongside each other for time out of mind.  Thus, everyone knew to leave a bowl of milk by the door, blackberries remaining on the briar after October were left for the pookas, and the town smiths avoided iron in favor of bronze and tin. 

Sometimes the townspeoples’ young folk followed a Faery lover Under Hill and sometimes they took their Faery mate home with them.  Children were exchanged and always grew up well.  The lines between Fair Folk and townsfolk had long since blurred; more often than not, even the scruffiest townschild was born with a spark of magic and a distaste for Cold Iron.

So when destruction knocked, the townsfolks’ decision was simple.  They packed up their houses, bundled up their children, and drove their animals ahead, taking themselves and everything they had Under Hill and closing the Ways behind them.  The green grassy knoll beside the river shivered and settled, dust settling into the fresh wagon-ruts.  No person or animal remained, the town empty before the encroaching army.

 

When the invading army arrived, a bare half-day after the Ways shut behind the tailfeathers of the last foul-tempered goose, it was to empty pastures and abandoned houses.  A few cracked dishes were left in the cupboards, a tattered ragdoll lay where some child had forgotten it, and the uncanny emptiness of the town raised the hairs on the backs of the soldiers’ necks.  Wheels ruts, footprints, and trampled grass led to a grassy knoll by the river, where the trail abruptly vanished. 

It was a comfortable hamlet, with space to spare for weary soldiers.  The well was clean, the river clear, the pastures green, the houses sound, and everything was empty.

The commander tried to camp his troops in the empty town, but the food spoiled, the horses, spooked, and the men were so jumpy from the sense of _something watching them_ , that they were forced to leave, nerves frayed to the breaking.

Other travelers or settlers fared no better.  They might stay for a day or a night, might last out even a month, but all eventually left again.  The empty town remained, oddly resistant to Nature’s entropy. 

If you take the left-hand path from the crossroads, the crooked one grown close-about with grass and brush, you can visit it still.  The empty, abandoned town is still there, when the path opens up beyond the last bend. 

The well in the town square has a few weeds about it, but the cover hasn’t rotted and the bucket beside it hasn’t cracked.  The paint on the houses has faded, the wood has weathered silver, and the windows may have a few hairline cracks, but no shingles have blown away and everything is still eerily sound.  The fields surrounding the town are overgrown, but still weedy and grassy, not gone to shrubs and woodland.  And the grassy knoll by the river is innocuous and green, without trace of the tracks of the townspeople’s flight.

The odd watchfulness of the place remains.  It will not have you stay.  Will you, nill you, no matter how pleasant it is, that edginess will grow until you leave.  The empty town disappears behind the bend and you breathe easier as you reach the crossroads.  Branches rustle behind you, but you know better than to look.

 

Under Hill, the townsfolk settled with their sisters and cousins and grandparents, both mortal and Fair Folk and those in-between, and never looked back.  Time passed and even the oldest among them eventually forgot that they had once been two people and that Faery had not always been their home, though the memory lingers, on the edges. 

The rare child born purely mortal is called “Ordinary,” an “Ord,” who can no more breathe magic than magic can touch them back.  Cold Iron holds no sway against them and even the mightiest spells and enchantments touch them not.  No matter that such children are rare as a white buffalo, rarer than hens’ teeth (which can be bought at the market), the old name lingers still.  


End file.
